The Crown of Dalemark (The Dalemark Quartet 4)

PART ONE

MITT

1

The Earl of Hannart arrived in Aberath two days before Midsummer. He was bringing the Countess of Aberath a portrait of the Adon to put in her collection. As this was a state visit, he brought his son as well and a string of his hearthmen, and his arrival caused a rare bustle.

A tall man dressed like a shepherd watched it all from high in the hills where the green roads ran. He had an excellent view from there, not only into the seething courts of the mansion but of the whole town, the cliffs, the bay, and the boat sheds. The Earl was easy to pick out among the hurrying figures, because he was with a servant carrying the picture. The man watched them go straight to the library, where he knew the Countess was waiting to receive the Earl. Almost immediately the servant was sent away to fetch someone else. The watcher could see him pushing his way, first to the stables, then to the dining hall, and finally to the hearthmen’s quarters, where he fetched out a large gangly person and pointed to the library. The gangly one set off there at a run, on long, gawky legs.

The watcher turned away. “So they did send for this Mitt,” he said as if this had confirmed his worst suspicions. Then he looked up and round and over his shoulder, clearly thinking that someone else was standing nearby, watching, too. But the green road was empty. The man shrugged and set off walking swiftly inland.

About the same time as this man left, Mitt arrived at the top of the library steps, trying not to pant, and pushed open the creaky door.

“Oh, there you are,” said the Countess. “We want you to kill someone.”

She was never one to beat about the bush. It was almost the only thing Mitt liked about her. All the same, he wondered if he had heard her right. He stared at her long, bony face, which was set slightly crooked on her high shoulders, and then looked at Earl Keril of Hannart to make sure. Mitt had been ten months now in Aberath, but the North Dalemark accent there still sometimes made him hear things wrong. Earl Keril was dark, with a long nose. Everyone said what a likable man he was, but he was looking at Mitt as grimly as the Countess.

“Didn’t you hear?” Earl Keril asked. “We want someone dead.”

“Yes. Is this a joke of some kind?” Mitt said. But he could tell from their faces that it was not. He felt cold and disgusted, and his knees shook. “I gave up killing—I told you!” he said to the Countess.

“Nonsense,” she said. “Why else do you think I had you trained as my hearthman?”

“You would have it that way, not me!” Mitt said. “And I never kidded myself you made me learn all that out of love for me!”

Earl Keril looked questioningly at the Countess.

“I warned you he was rude,” she said. She leaned toward him, and they murmured together.

Mitt was too disgusted to try to overhear. He looked beyond their two implacable faces at the painting of the Adon propped on an easel behind them. The light was across the canvas from where Mitt stood, in a bluish haze, but the painted eyes caught his, like dark holes in the haze. They looked ill and haunted. The famous Adon had been far from handsome, sickly-looking, with lank hair and crooked shoulders. Near on a cripple, like the Countess, Mitt thought. She and Earl Keril both descended from the Adon. She had the shoulders; Keril had the Adon’s long nose. Earlier that day Mitt would have been thoroughly disappointed to find that the Adon looked like this. Since he came to Aberath, he had heard story after story of the Adon, the great hero who had talked with the Undying and lived as an outlaw before he became the last King of Dalemark several hundred years ago. Now he looked from the painting to the two living faces leaning together in the twilight of the library, and he thought, Fairy stories! Bet he was just as bad as they are! Well, I ran off from Holand, so I reckon I can run off from Aberath, too.

Just then he caught a murmur from Keril. “Oh, yes, I’m sure that he is!” Sure I am what? Mitt wondered as they both looked at him again. “We’ve gone into your history,” Keril said to him. “Attempted murder in Holand. Successful murder in the Holy Islands—”

“That’s a lie!” Mitt said angrily. “Whatever you think, I never murdered a single soul! And I gave up trying long before I came here.”

“Then you’ll have to force yourself to try again,” said the Countess. “Won’t you?”

“And you came on here by boat,” Keril went on, before Mitt could speak, “with Navis Haddsson and his children Hildrida and Ynen. In Aberath the Countess took you in and had you educated—”

“For my sins,” the Countess said unlovingly.

“So you see the North has treated you well,” Earl Keril said. “Better than most refugees from the South, in fact, both you and your friends. We found Navis a post as hearthman to Stair of Adenmouth, and we sent Hildrida to study at the Lawschool in Gardale. Have you ever wondered why this was?” As Mitt wondered about it, Keril added pleasantly, “Why the four of you were separated in this way, I mean.”

It was a pleasantness that made Mitt feel like a sack with a hole in it. Everything trickled away through the hole, and his knees almost let him down. “Where’s Ynen then?” he said. “Isn’t he with Navis?”

“No,” said the Countess. “And we are not telling you where he is.”

Mitt watched her long jaw shut like a trap. “I used to think,” he said, “that the earls in the North were good. But you’re as bad as the ones in the South. Go to any lengths, all of you! You’re telling me to kill someone for you or my friends suffer. Right?”

“Let’s just say—if you want to see your friends again,” Keril suggested.

“Well you’re wrong,” Mitt said. “You can’t make me do anything. I don’t care two hoots for any of them.”

The two implacable faces just looked at him.

Mitt managed a careless shrug. “We happened to ride on the same boat, that’s all,” he said. “I swear it.”

“You swear it? By which of the Undying?” Keril asked. “By the One? The Piper? The Wanderer? She Who Raised the Islands? The Weaver? The Earth Shaker? Come on. Choose which and swear.”

“We don’t swear like that in the South,” said Mitt.

“I know,” said Keril. “So it won’t hurt you to swear to me by the Earth Shaker that Navis and his children mean nothing to you. Just swear, and we’ll forget the whole matter.”

The

ir faces tilted toward Mitt. Mitt looked away, at the dark painted eyes of the Adon, and tried to make himself swear. If Keril had chosen any other of the Undying, he thought he could have done it easily. But not the Earth Shaker. And that showed how frighteningly much Keril knew. Even so, perhaps he could swear about Navis and Hildy and let on he meant Ynen, too? Navis, cold fish on a slab that the man was, still didn’t seem to like Mitt particularly, and as for Hildy, after her last letter, Mitt could almost swear he hated her. But he had shown he was worried about Ynen, like a fool, and there was no way he could even pretend to dislike Ynen or let these two earls hurt him.

“Is Ynen all right?” he said.

“Perfectly, at the moment,” said the Countess. She never told lies. Mitt was relieved, until he realized that she and Keril both had the same look, satisfied and unsurprised. They knew he had given in. They had expected it.

“I warn you,” Mitt said, “if there’s murdering needing doing, I can see two ripe cases for it here in this room. So who do you want killed? What’s so special that you need to go to all this trouble with me to have it done?” Keril’s eyebrows went up. The Countess seemed surprised. Good, Mitt thought. Find out how important it is from how rude they let me be. “Do you take me for a fool?” he said. “If it was lawful, you both have lawyers to burn, and if it was ordinary, you’ve hearthmen to do it by hundreds. And I’d lay good money you have spies and murderers better than me any day. So it stands to reason it must be politics—you wanting to lay this on Southern scum like me.”

“You said it, not me,” Keril replied. “Politics, it is. We want a young lady out of the way. She’s very charming and much too popular. The whole of the west coast, including Dropwater, will follow her as soon as she gives the word.”

“Flaming Ammet!” protested Mitt.

“Be quiet!” said the Countess. “Listen!” She said it like the snap of a steel trap. End of rudeness, thought Mitt, and swallowed what he had been going to say. It hurt, as if he had swallowed an apple whole.

“Noreth of Kredindale, known as Onesdaughter,” Keril said. “I expect you’ve heard of her.” Mitt shook his head, but it was from amazement, because he had indeed heard of Noreth Onesdaughter. The story of the One’s only human child was one of the many, many stories he had heard round the small coal fires in Aberath this last winter. He had thought that like other stories, it was from times long ago. But Keril, in the most matter-of-fact way, went on to speak of Noreth as alive here and now. “Unfortunately,” he said, “she’s extremely well connected. The Kredindale family go back to the Adon’s daughter Tanabrid, whose mother was of the Undying. Noreth is cousin to Gardale and Dropwater—though Stair’s wife at Adenmouth is the aunt who brought her up—and she’s a distant cousin of mine, too—”